Thick-target Yield of $^{65}$Cu($α,n)^{68}$Ga Near Threshold and Implications for Nuclear Medicine, Deep Underground Detector Backgrounds, and Nucleosynthesis

We report thick target yields of $^{65}{\rm Cu}(α,n)^{68}{\rm Ga}$ from $α$ energies $E_α$$=$6.5--8~MeV measured via neutron-counting at the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory at Ohio University. Our results agree with prior results based on single-foil irradiations, while disagreeing with thick-target